or a moment he must fall.

"Haul up!" shouted Ralph. "Quick!"

The rope rattled and scraped again; and then, as Mark hung there,
half-insensible, he heard what sounded like quarrelling.

"You shan't go, Master Ralph. Who's to meet Sir Morton if you get a
fall trying to save a thing like that?"

Even in his half-insensible state Mark felt a quiver run through him;
and then he lay listening again, as if to hear what was taking place
about some one else.

"Silence!" came to his ear. "How dare you, sir! Now, all of you lower
me down."

There was a rustling and scraping directly after, which seemed to last a
long time, before something brushed against the listener, and he
quivered, for he felt that he was going. Then there was a panting
noise, which came up, as it were, out of the darkness, and he was
clutched tightly, hot breath came upon his cheek, and a hoarse voice
yelled in his ear,--

"Got him! Haul up steadily!" and directly after, the voice became a
whisper, which said,--

"Pray God the rope may not break."

Mark was conscious now of being scraped against the rock, and brushed by
twigs, for what seemed to be a very long time, before he was roughly
seized by more hands, and dragged heavily over the cliff edge, to be
dropped upon the short grass, as a voice he had heard before cried
harshly,--

"You've done it now, Master Ralph, and got your wolf cub after all."

"Yes," panted Ralph hoarsely, as Mark felt as if a cloud had suddenly
rolled away from his sight, and he saw clearly that half-a-dozen men
were surrounding him, and Ralph Darley, his greatest enemy, was kneeling
at his side, saying softly,--

"Yes, I've got the wolf cub after all;" and then the two lads' eyes met,
and gazed deeply into each other's in a curious stare.

That stare had the same effect on both lads--that of making them feel
uncomfortable.

Mark Eden, as he recovered from the shock of being so near a terrible
ending to his young life, felt that, surrounded as he was by enemies, he
ought to spring to his feet, draw his sword, and defend himself to the
last; while Ralph Darley knew that, according to all old family
traditions, he ought to order his men to seize a hand and foot each,
give his young enemy two or three swings, and launch him headlong off
the mighty cliff, and then stand and laugh at the capers he would cut in
his fall.

For people had been very savage in their revenges out in that wild part
of England, shut a